A gentle breeze swayed the treetops while the croaking of frogs brought life to the gloomy ground covered in mud and tangled vines.
Rias moved swiftly. Her instincts told her she was being watched, and after several days surviving in that environment, she had learned to trust them.
Her mind was tense; every sound put her on alert. Even so, she didn't panic. As hard as it was to admit, that place had benefited her. Her perception had sharpened, her magic had improved, and even her body had undergone unexpected changes.
It was ironic, but she came to think that the Gremory and Bael genes flowing through her blood had been wasted in an environment as peaceful as Kuoh, under the constant protection of her family.
Still, if given the choice between living through this or continuing in Kuoh, she would rather not have ended up there…
A sudden crack made her stop dead in her tracks. Her senses sharpened as she scanned her surroundings. A magic circle formed in her hand, compressing devil power charged with energy of destruction.
Lately, she wasn't being attacked only by weak reptilian mobs; the power level of her enemies seemed to be increasing. Attacking carelessly and wasting devil power was no longer an option.
Her instincts screamed and she dodged. A blur passed before her eyes before crashing into the ground, kicking up leaves and mud.
Still unable to clearly see her enemy, she fired a small burst of spheres charged with destruction power. It wasn't a full attack, but it would serve to gauge the threat level.
The impact never came. A massive purple serpent tail withdrew with agility, evading the attack.
Rias clicked her tongue. Her body tensed to the limit as she hastily moved sideways. With a splash, a purple liquid sizzled against the mud, releasing a whitish vapor.
Then she saw it.
In front of her, a massive, robust, obese medusa stared at her with red eyes. Its tongue writhed, and its mouth—filled with sharp teeth—still dripped with venom. It seemed to smile as it prepared to attack again. A stab of anxiety pierced Rias's chest. She recognized that creature. It wasn't the first time they had fought, and sadly, so far she had never managed to defeat it.
Rias wondered why, despite having the opportunity, she always allowed it to escape.
The medusa didn't stop. Its enormous body slid across the mud with unnatural fluidity for its size, closing the distance in an instant. The cold, vertical red eyes of the serpents forming its hair locked onto Rias.
The thick tail came down like a whip. Rias raised a magic barrier, but it only held for a few seconds before shattering. The impact sent her flying several meters back; she rolled across the ground until her back slammed into a moss-covered tree trunk. The air escaped her lungs in a strangled gasp.
Still on the ground, Rias rolled aside just as the medusa's jaws snapped shut where her head had been moments before. Without fully standing, she extended both hands, conjured a magic circle, and unleashed a rain of small crimson spheres. Dozens—perhaps hundreds—each compressed to the limit and vibrating with unstable destructive energy.
The spheres exploded against the medusa's scaly body in a succession of dull detonations. Mud flew into the air, nearby trees splintered, and the nocturnal croaking abruptly ceased.
When the smoke cleared, the medusa was still there.
Several purple scales were cracked; a dark liquid ran down its side and evaporated upon touching the ground. Even so, the creature had barely retreated. A faint gray energy coated its body.
It twisted its torso and a deep hiss escaped its throat—more like a signal than a cry of pain.
The surroundings came alive.
From among the roots and murky waters emerged elongated, crawling bodies: snakes of various sizes, rough-skinned geckos with gleaming eyes, hybrid creatures with crooked fangs and forked tongues. Individually they weren't powerful, but their numbers turned the terrain into a living trap.
"Again…" Rias muttered through clenched teeth.
She spun as she moved, firing new bursts of compressed spheres. Each impact disintegrated lesser reptiles, leaving steaming craters in the mud. However, for every body reduced to ash, two more seemed to take its place. The medusa advanced among them, unperturbed, directing the assault without intervening directly.
Rias began to feel the strain. She knew that this environment increased devil power consumption.
This won't work, she thought. Even though she had managed to compress her energy into smaller attacks, that had also weakened them. She needed to increase the damage.
As she reflected, she was distracted for just a second.
A serpent's tail struck her. This time she didn't manage to evade it completely. The impact sent her spinning through the air before she crashed heavily into the ground. Mud soaked her skin, and the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.
She took a deep breath, ignoring the pain.
She remembered a robot anime she had once watched. The thought was absurd given the situation, but it was inspiring enough.
If she could compress it… then she could also focus it.
"Like a laser…" she thought.
A magic circle appeared in front of her chest. The world seemed to narrow as Rias gathered her power, forcing it to flow into a single point.
The Rias from before reaching that swamp would never have managed something like this. But her control over devil power had improved.
The energy of destruction became dense, almost solid, vibrating with a high-pitched hum that made even the nearest reptiles retreat.
She opened her eyes.
A crimson beam burst from the magic circle like a perfect, silent line. It didn't explode or scatter; it simply pierced everything in its path.
The ray passed through the reptiles' bodies; anything it touched vanished, reduced to nothing before it could even react.
The medusa's eyes widened in shock.
The beam was so fast it couldn't dodge—and it was about to hit it.
Space rippled.
A voluptuous figure appeared in front of the medusa without warning. With a lazy flick of her hand, she deflected the beam of destruction, which dispersed into harmless particles before fading into the air.
Rias felt her heart stop for an instant as she sensed the aura of the newcomer.
The lamia possessed a voluptuous upper torso and an enormous serpentine lower body that far surpassed the medusa's in size.
Her presence crushed the surroundings with invisible pressure. Her sharp yet alluring eyes settled on Rias with a mixture of doubt and restrained interest.
"Interesting…" Melusine said in a soft, bewitching voice. "You're not a duelist. How did you get here?"
It wasn't an empty question; she was genuinely confused.
Duelists—humans endowed with spiritual aptitude and resonance—usually fought by summoning monster spirits or activating spells through spiritual energy, colloquially known among them as "shadow energy." However, the redhead before her had done none of that. At first, Melusine assumed she had simply run out of energy, so she paid it little mind and attributed the strange initial sensation to some kind of deal with the Archfiends.
But throughout the entire time she tested her by sending serpents and subordinates, she never summoned anything. The devil energy didn't come from Archifiends—it was hers.
Melusine was astonished. Rias wasn't a monster spirit or a human. Her very existence thrilled the enchanting lamia.
"That is… entertaining," she thought as her serpentine tongue brushed her lip in a seductive gesture.
The young woman before her was exactly what she was looking for: a suitable avatar that would bring excitement back into her stagnant life.
"And from what I've seen, she won't die easily. She's useful," Melusine nodded, watching the redhead with eyes growing ever brighter and more covetous.